The Black Sheep And the Princess. Donna Kauffman

someone like you would be jealous of the attention someone like me would pay to other girls.”

      “I didn’t say that. Not exactly,” she added, knowing she’d done exactly that. “I wasn’t speaking from my own perspective, just the expectations of our surroundings and, for that matter, of you.”

      “Cop-out.”

      Her cheeks burned. Mostly because he was right. “We were from opposite sides of the tracks. That was a fact I couldn’t change. Nor could I change that I was the owner’s daughter. Or that I led a privileged life that you did not. But that’s exactly what I’m getting at. What did or didn’t happen between us was more a product of our respective backgrounds, and the surroundings we found ourselves in, than a reflection of what we might have really wanted.” Too late, she realized what she’d admitted.

      If she’d thought his gaze intense a moment ago, she’d had no idea of the intensity of which he was capable. Perhaps it was the close confines, the air between them growing more damp and humid as their body heat changed the temperature inside the cab of the truck. Or maybe it was simply Donovan.

      “What did you really want, Kate?”

      She looked at him for a long time, knowing she should shut this conversation down right then and there. Instead, she told him the truth. “I wanted you.” She leaned back, wishing she could put more distance between them. “There, ego satisfied now?”

      He smiled, but it didn’t diminish one whit the heat in his gaze. “This isn’t about ego. I know you watched me. I know I might have talked my way into your fancy French panties.”

      Her mouth dropped open. “How do you know what underwear I wore?”

      He laughed then. “I flat out state I could have gotten into your pants anytime I wanted, and you’re indignant because I know what you were wearing under those prim little designer slacks?”

      Her face burned again, and she folded her arms across her chest. He was overwhelming every part of her, physically and emotionally. It was too much all at once. She wasn’t prepared to handle this—or him. She should have never let him climb in her truck. Hell, she should have never let him on her property in the first place, not that he’d asked permission.

      Thankfully, she could still do something about that.

      Before she could open her mouth, though, Donovan reached over and fingered a loose tendril of hair that had escaped from the soft ponytail she’d put her hair in that morning.

      She should swat his hand away, yet she discovered she was absolutely incapable of doing so. In fact, it took considerable will not to turn her head slightly so her cheek would brush the backs of his fingers. Honestly, she had to get him the hell out of this truck. And out of her life.

      “I knew you wanted me, Kate. I might not have smiled at you, but I thought you understood the feeling was mutual,” he said, his voice an octave lower and more than a shade rougher. “With the other girls, it didn’t matter if they rejected me. Or if they went running back to their rich boyfriends after tasting what I had to offer. I knew I wasn’t anything more than a cheap thrill, but that didn’t bother me. In fact, it sort of amused me, to know I could have them, make them come back looking for more.”

      She swallowed hard when he let his blunt fingertips slide down the length of the strand of hair, then let it go. She held her breath, wondering if he was going to touch her skin, touch…anything he wanted to.

      “But you,” he said, his voice so quiet now, so deep, it vibrated the air in the close confines of the truck. “I couldn’t stand the thought of you looking at me like that. Thinking of me like that. With you it was different.”

      “Why?” she managed in a choked whisper.

      “You mattered.” He shook his head, that rueful smile flickering across his still handsome as sin features. “One of the mysteries of the universe, I guess. But I knew it when I laid eyes on you. And no one was more surprised than I was to discover that when I looked at you again, in that newspaper article, after all these years, all I’ve seen, all I’ve done…something in my gut twisted up like I was seventeen all over again.” He brushed the tips of his fingers over her lips, making her breath catch in her throat. “You always had that effect on me, Kate. I guess time and distance, and a lot of growing up, didn’t change that.”

      “Is—is that why you came back, then? You had some wild reaction to a picture of me, so…you came back as some sort of personal test?”

      His gaze dropped to her mouth, and it was all she could do not to wet her lips.

      “Maybe that’s part of it. I don’t know. I do know one thing, though.” He pressed his fingers beneath her chin, tilted her head slightly. And she did absolutely nothing to stop him. “I no longer seem to have any restraint around you. Or maybe it’s just I see no reason to any longer. I’m not the insecure teenager I was back then, desperate for approval, terrified of rejection.”

      “You were hardly that,” she murmured, surprised she could form words at all.

      “I was exactly that, with those who mattered. It was a very short list. But you were on it.”

      He leaned closer. She swallowed hard.

      “Donovan—”

      “Kick me out of the truck now, Kate.”

      “I—”

      “On second thought, don’t. Not yet.” He tipped her chin up farther and leaned closer. “At least not until I give you a better reason to.”